Tuesday - another "work on the bus" day

Being around all these other Blue Birds makes us invigorated to work on stuff around the bus. We got two projects done today and I have pictures of two other projects that we worked on in the past couple of days.

First, the projects from yesterday:

New spare tire carrier installed.

New tow bar installed - today we tried hooking it up to the Jeep and made sure lights still worked, so we think we're in good shape for now.

 p.s. for Jimmy's consideration - we will need to consider the depth of the spare tire carrier in the piece that you will be creating to alter the Blue Ox Hi-Low hitch. We're thinking it would be better to do the whole project while we are at the farm in the spring... so you can add your wisdom to the mix!

Today's projects were on the roof of the bus. The wind finally was not quite as high today and the sun was out, so it was a good day for activities on the roof.

First, I got some pictures of the Birds' Nest.

In the middle of this picture you can see the wood pile for the nightly campfire, and just beyond it to the right are the tables set up for various pot lucks through the week.

There is also a second (and maybe third) row behind us - I could only get the ones that are on our side of the circle, but I'm sure there are more across the circle too (though we have not walked over there yet).

 The major project today was to see if we could clean out the air horns. They have been behaving oddly - blowing at times when we are not trying to blow them, and they sounded like a strangled duck when blowing on their own or when we blew the horn. We had various opinions on the strangled duck sound, all involving cleaning the horns. So, we took the horns apart and cleaned them:

Passenger side horn

Driver's side horn. We took the back plate off to remove the diaphragm to  clean it.

We found that the area just in front of the diaphragm was quite dirty (corroded) too.

Dwayne sent me up with the drill and dremel - I wasn't quite sure how to use it so he came up to do the work.

Dwayne working on the passenger side horn.

That got a lot of it...

Then with a smaller head

The one on the driver's side wasn't quite as corroded.

Dwayne cleaned it too.

It is getting clean

working on the horn

 I ended up going down to get some items that Dwayne needed - and one of the other bus owners came over and recommended checking the long tube to see if it was plugged up - it was - so Dwayne cleaned that out too...

Paper towel with various spider web and bug residue which Dwayne cleaned out of the horn.

While he was up there, we decided to run the wire for the Cellular booster down through the area above the refrigerator so we would not have to run the wire out the window any more. Ultimately, we plan to mount the antenna on the top of the TV antenna as that will get it high in the air and hopefully give us the best reception from it, but that is a project for Yuma.

So, we got quite a bit done, and are now preparing for our Prime Rib dinner in the desert tonight!